Jane
Written and Directed by Brett Morgen
Music by Philip Glass
Genre: Documentary, 1hr 30mins
Frontier Theater, 14 Maine St, Mill 3, Fort Andross, Brunswick

Oscar®-and Emmy®-nominated director Brett Morgen, described as “the leading revolutionary of American documentary film” by The Wall Street Journal, uses a trove of 16mm footage rediscovered in 2014 from the National Geographic archives to shed fresh light on world-changing conservationist Jane Goodall, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and U.N. Messenger of Peace. An animal lover since childhood, the 26-year-old British woman arrives in Tanzania’s Gombe wilderness in 1960 to live among the chimpanzees and study their behavior. The rare woman in a male-dominated field, Goodall has no scientific training. What she does possess are binoculars, monumental patience and a keen eye for details, which she meticulously records in her notebook.

Neither Wolf Nor Dog
Directed by Steven Lewis Simpson
Cast: Dave Bald Eagle, Christopher Sweeney, Richard Ray Whitman
Genre: Drama, 1hr 50mins
Frontier Theater, 14 Maine St, Mill 3, Fort Andross, Brunswick

Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Kent Nerburn, this funny and deeply moving film follows an author who gets sucked into the heart of contemporary Native American life in the sparse lands of the Dakotas by a 95-year-old Lakota elder. Kent Nerburn (Christopher Sweeney), a good-hearted, white American family man and writer, receives a mysterious call from a distant Indian reservation regarding an oral history book he made with Red Lake Ojibwe reservation students in northern Minnesota. Despite misgivings, Kent travels across America’s northern plains to arrive at the bleak, poverty-stricken reservation deep in the high plains of the Dakotas. The old man, Dan (Dave Bald Eagle), who lives alone in a clapboard shack back in the hills with his only real companions—his dog, a close friend named Grover (Richard Ray Whitman) and his granddaughter, Wenonah (Roseanne Supernault)—interrogates Kent as to his motives for working with Indian people. Once satisfied he is not a turquoise clad “wannabe” spouting Indian philosophy, Dan recounts the story of American history from the Native point of view. As the stories pour from Dan, Kent’s understanding of the world is turned upside down. An inanimate landscape comes alive, and a history he thought he knew is called into question.